LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2606, 30 October 1915, Page 9

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Some Chestorton Essays. Mr. Chesterton has been half jocularly, half seriously compared to Dr. Johnson, but on one point at-least the many-sided man of letters, who in physical proportions is said to recall that earlier :Sage of Fleet Street, is more happily gifted than Boswell's hero. For Mr.. Chesterton, poet, essayist,;novelist, politician, has a deeply-rooted and highsense of. humour wherewith to temper his socia 1 . philosophy, Underlying. Mr. Chesterton's humour there almost always exists the same base of good- sense, eminently British common serisejVand a keen perception of tho - things that really matter, which characterise so many of Dr. Johnson's famous sayings. These qualities of •humour and common Bense are agreeably displayed in the thirty odd essays comprised in the volume entitled "All Things Considered," which Messrs. Methuen have now-added to their admirable Shilling Library. Hitherto the collection in question has cost the booklover fivp shillings, and the . cheaper edition should prove very welcome. There are those, I know, who are a little puzzled at first by Mr. Chesterton's too persistent love of paradox. But once the Chest-ertonian flavour is acquired, enjoyment of the essays is certain. , The range of subjects dealt with is astonishingly wide, and'the treatment 'is always as bright aa the' point of view is novel.. _ Mr. Chesterton, is. a satirist, but a genial, not an ill-natured, satirist. A fine spirit of tolerance. and charity permeates all his work. For fifteenpence this modest, little volume provides a rich fund of wisdom and entertainment.

Wine, Water, and Song. "Wine, Water, and Song" (Methuen's) is the title of a neat paper-eov-. ered volume, containing a number of verses which formed part of that remarkable, and not altogether' successful, story, "The Flying ,Inn," by which Mr. Chesterton so grievously perturbed tho minds_-of those of his; political and literary friends who are ixterested _in temperance reform. For "The Flying Inn" was a literary tribute to Bacchus, a jolly, good-natured free-living, rules and regulations despising British Bacchus. . In some of . these , verses there .is a lilt and 6wjng which recall , -Mr.. .Chesterton's efforts of a more serious -type, and what admirable poetry Mr. Chesterton can write .when he. chooses all who liaye read "The Ballad of the White Horse" or. the splendid "Lepanto" in the more recently-published "Poems" will, cheerfully testify. Some of the verses, as "The Song ..Grocers," are irresistibly funny.-.:jThe,satirist is comparing the innkeeper (old time, eminently British variety) with the newtime, .grocer—to the grave disadvantage, of the latter. As, for example :— The righteous ,n»inds of innkeepers • - Induce them now and then To crack a bottle ijitb a friend ' Or treat unmoneyed men; But who hath seen the Grocer , Treat housemaids to ; his teas Or crack a bottle offish sauce, Or stand a man a cheese? He sells lis §ands of Araby As sugar for cash down; He sweeps his shop and sells the dust, The purest salt in town; .' He crams with cans of poisoned: meat Poor subjects, of the King, ■ • And when they die by thousands Why, he laughs-like anything.-

Perilously near mere . doggerel, no doubt, but amusing enough in its way'. Whether these rhymes" were altogether worthy of being transplanted from their original environment in the pages of • the novel will,; however, be doubted by' not a few of Mr. Chesterton's admirers, lie man who could write that truly splendid poem' should surely leave doggerel—however humorous—to some other hand. Songs of the Open Air. There are many gracefully-worded, truly musical verses in "Sougs of the Open Air," by Nina Murdoch (Sydney; William Brooks and Co.). Several of tlie poems here collected have appeared in the "Bulletin,"' the Sydney "Sun," and "The Booklover." Miss Murdoch has clearly an ability; to see and interpret in very pleasant verse the mystery and charm of nature, and her metaphors are rarely overstrained; Sentiment, too, is cleverly interwoven with nature's workings, as witness tho following extract from fho poem entitled "In a Garden"•' ; Tho moonlight lay as softly on the flowers ■ As tender Hsses dropped on sleeping eyes, And cast a spell upon the fleeting hours, Turning our laughter ere we , knew, to ■ sighs. And all the while the hidden crickets sent . ■ Such little passionate thriddings from the grass; We fancied that the hooded night had bent To whisper to us ere she let us pass. So wo who did- not know her mystic power, Nor dreamed yet of the subtle web she wove, Made foolish vows we could not keep an houT, Trembled and langhed and kissed— and called it love. Of the twelve Sonnets of the Months, "August," in which the poet gives so alluring a glimpse of ths dawn of the Australian spring, seems most to invito quotation:— Who can have robbed the winter of its sting And tipped the stately bottle-brush' with red. And set tho peo-wee calling overhead? Who is it speeds on dancing feet to bring Tho scented brown boronia and to fling Tho sarsaparilla on the bracken bed. And seeing that the blue-wren fain would wed Splashes a deeper purple on his wing? Oh! It is August, surging by the creek And flitting to and fro upon tho heath. With busy fingers and bewitching ways Of darting here and there'at hide-and-seek To -please her babo. tho Spring-, who underneath A loafy shelter with a wild-flower plays. Miss Murdoch's little volume is tastefully produced', and more deserves a place on the bookshelf than some much more pretentious productions of certain Australian verso writers:— A New Zealand Poet. ■" In "another place," as the Parliamentary phraseology goes, I have writton at some length of Mr. T. Chamberlin Chamberlin's "Songs from tho Forest of Tane" (C. A. Innes, Wellington), and I can only spars space to-day i to welcome a nawi.Acd daintiu>n;oduce4

edition of versos which deserve the attention of all lovers of true poetry.'' From one, at least of the poems, out of the all too slender sheaf, I must perforco find room for a quotation. This is tho poem .entitled "Ao-tea-Roa," from which I take tho following lines:— Land where tho sweet smoke fades Into a bluer sky, Sweetening the languorous air Heavy with blossoming trees Sweetening the passionate thoughts Into a living dream, Sweetening ancl quickening to life ' The very soul of things. ; Land of the long white cloud Land where my children sleep, Land of deep strife 'and pain Yet land of the deepest love. Hills where the silence broods, Over dark forest ami-glade • ■ ' , Over the sunlit stream, . . Over the moon-bathed pool.. . Lack of form is evident in' most of the, verses, but in compensation tho poems have a charm—at. times slightly elusive charm—which is all .their own. A photogravure portrait'.of a handsome young Maori, Pani Paora Chamborlin, lan adopted son of the author, forms a suitable frontispiece for a volume of verse in which the interest is so largely connected with the Native race. (Prico 35.)

The Book of the Day artiole next week will have for its subject an entirely new and, in many ways, .very original and suggestive study of the great Florentine painter. Leonardo da Vinci, by Mr. G. Anderson, author of that fascinating work, "The Romance of Fra Lippo Lippi."